Leapfrogging the West

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Addressing the crowd at Cleantech Forum XIX, India's Minister of New and Renewable Energy Shri Vilas Mutemwar discussed India's achievements in increasing the country's renewable energy capacity and plans to make India a manufacturing hub for renewable energy.

These are some of the highlights of his speech:

• Energy security issues have taken center stage of national policy debate in India for the first time.
• The key drivers for renewable alternatives emerging from the peculiar situation  prevailing in India are low per capita consumption of energy especially electricity, low access to commercial sources of energy and the power sector's quest to sustain India's GDP growth rate of 8 percent to 9 percent. 
• India’s achievements up to Aug. 31 of this year are quite satisfactory. The country has achieved about 13,000 megawatts of grid-interactive installed renewable power, which is around 8 percent of the total installed grid capacity of the country, 230 MW off-grid and distributed renewable power, 1.4 million solar PV lighting systems-mostly in rural areas, 2.3 million square meters of solar collector area. India is fourth in the world as far as wind energy is concerned with around 9,500 MW wind-power. The country is second after China in biogas installations with 4.02 million family-sized plants.
• The National Action Plan on Climate Change released by the Prime Minister in June states India’s intent and resolve to control and reduce carbon emissions in the short, medium and long term. This is a mammoth task as 70 percent of commercial energy supply depends on fossil fuels.
• Mutemwar thinks the manufacturing of renewable systems, devices, components and parts could be best done in India. The country has embraced new and clean technology as the new investment mantra, in many cases leapfrogging the Western manufacturing infrastructure.
• Mutemwar said he is keen to offer the services of a special economic zone (SEZ) exclusively dedicated to renewable industry. An SEZ is expected to begin soon at Nagpur where the Multimodal International Cargo & Passenger Hub at Nagpur (MIHAN) is taking shape. 
• In India's overall scheme of incentivizing manufacturing industry of renewable energy, the country plans to rationalize customs and excise duty structure and liberalize project import norms. India plans to facilitate joint ventures and technology transfers wherever necessary.